Collections of Resources on Education for Sustainability and Green Living

Thursday, February 23, 2017

The Global Butterfly Effect

By Christopher Chase

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” ―Richard Bach, Illusions

We are living now during one of the most
important time periods in human history. Our global species is at a
turning point, the actions and decisions we take collectively over the
next few decades will determine the path humanity (and all life on our
planet) takes far into the future― towards either greater harmony or
chaos, stability or destruction.

If one turns on the television, the news
does not sound good. The mass media feeds our fears, warning of global
warming, terrorism, racism, wealth inequality, economic instability and
ecological collapse.

While most of these problems are real,
what the media (and our leaders) do not understand is how these issues
are ALL symptoms of the destructive ways so-called “advanced”
civilizations see the world and behave. That the way to solve these
problems requires that we grow up (as a species), cultivating a deeper
level of wisdom, compassion and creativity.

“A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels…” ~Albert Einstein

Our children and grandchildren’s future
depends upon our species become less materialistic, fearful and violent,
more generous, peaceful and caring. It requires that billions of people
“wake up” to a deeper sense of unity and love for our human family and
the Natural world that supports us.

Mother Earth needs us to mature, to
transform ourselves from a selfish caterpillar-like species (that
consumes resources mindlessly), to more spiritual butterfly-like beings,
who behave wisely, dance among the flowers and take joy from living
lightly.

The time has come for our species to evolve
our consciousness, to open our hearts, to question the predatory
behaviors and mechanistic thinking of our more technologically advanced
warrior civilizations.

For thousands of years people in Western
cultures have been wrestling with the illusions we’ve spun from our
dualistic “us vs. them” mindsets and belief systems. It’s like we’ve
been dreaming a shared nightmare together, grounded in the predatory and
feudalistic ways our societies have been organized, rooted in how we
live and think.

Across the centuries, the very
foundation of Western civilization has been based on ideas of separation
and superiority- men above, women below; kings above, peasants below;
humans above, Nature below; etc.We’ve built walls of
separation in our hearts and minds, a sense of sin and abandonment,
believing that our entire species was “thrown out of Eden” by a sky God
that lives far far away.

With dualistic thinking came an emphasis on
linear time, our consciousnesses locked into mental projections of a
feared or desired future, an imagined and idealized history.

When lost in these linear projections we
became less aware of the magical nature of each moment, blind to the
beauty, value and mystery of the HERE and NOW. This is how schools teach
our children to think and feel, how our ancestors were dazed and
hypnotized.

From this mindset grew civilized humanity’s
mad circus of history, the hostile cultures of race and nationalism as
identity, religion as truth, militarism as method, acquisition of wealth
and power (by a ruling elite) as the organizing goals of our economic
and political systems, the unquestioned materialistic paradigm guiding
our way of life.

It manifested with the rise of wealth
obsessed empires seeking power and dominance in the Middle East and
Europe. Dualistic thinking led to the Witch Hunts during the
Renaissance, to Europeans coming to conquer the “New World” – thinking
themselves superior to the Natives, stealing their land. Then going to
Africa where they kidnaped and enslaved the people, robbing their
resources and dragging them across the oceans.

Over the centuries reductionistic and
compartmentalized thinking has given rise to all our most difficult
problems- to racism, sexism, nationalism, slavery, human trafficking,
organized crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, obesity, prostitution, genocide
and all our wars.

For thousands of years now,
individual artists, poets, prophets and sages have been trying to help
“civilized” humans to wake up from our delusions, to let love and wisdom
guide us, instead of materialism and fear.

From Jesus to Buddha, from Shakespeare’s “Romeo
& Juliet” to Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” Whitman & Blake’s
poems, Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” Van Gogh’s paintings and forward
thru time to the “Wizard of Oz,” Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,”
Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and James Cameron’s “Avatar”… the
message of love has been clear.

“Yes,there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on.” ―Led Zeppelin

There was a great creative burst of
realization and vision in the 1960s, but still the spirit crushing
institutions, materialistic lifestyles and unquestioned mechanistic
assumptions of the past continued to exert a powerful hypnotic force.

With the rise of new technologies and
global industrialization our consumer lifestyles have overpowered the
rivers, mountains and forests that surround us. Over the last five
decades we have been destroying Nature’s ecosystems at an astounding
rate.

Why has it been so difficult for humans to change?

In part, I think, it is because the
“Civilized” Matrix will do whatever it can to avoid a shutdown. Our
dominant institutions are designed to acquire wealth for those with
power, to maintain control, to defend, expand and perpetuate their
existence. Like the immune system of a body, attacking these systems
directly only strengthens them, leads to hostility and violence.

Mostly however, I believe that we have not
changed as a species because too many of us are still hypnotized.
Primarily identifying our sense of self with names, career, race,
religion, gender, political perspective or nationality.

Seeking pleasurable experiences, wealth,
status and material possessions; mistakenly believing that these will
bring us happiness and that the only way to solve complex problems is to
“defeat the opposition.”

What most of us have failed to see is that we are not
these social and cultural roles we imagine ourselves to be. And that
the historical systems that have constrained us- the darkness and
creative suppression- may have been exactly what we needed, to transform
our minds, let go of our fears and transcend our limited
cultural ideas of identity.“You are not IN the
universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you
are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming
conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.” ~Eckhart Tolle

We are Life, in human form. Descendants of
the stars and galaxies, children of the oceans and forests, creative
expressions of Nature. As much a part of this planet as the rivers,
trees, mountains and butterflies.

As more and more of us wake up to that
deeper sense of identity we will be more easily able to transcend old
thought patterns and beliefs. Observing Nature’s Systems closely,
studying her ways, we can re-write and delete old programming.

To truly bring an end to the
destructiveness of humanity- to really transform the world- a deeper
wisdom has to first arise from within. As individuals, we must each “be
the change” as Gandhi put it. We have to free ourselves first, transform
our ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Then join with others who have awakened,
taking the wisdom of our wholeness and applying it creatively to
everything we say and do, to all fields of human activity. Economics,
entertainment, technology, education, art, music, poetry, law, medicine,
farming, politics, transportation, energy- they all can (and must) be
transformed.

What is dawning now is the realization that
we are not the solitary individuals we had believed ourselves to be. We
are expressions of Universal life, Children of the Earth. We are the
“leaves of grass” Walt Whitman spoke of – the Awakening voices of Eden,
instruments of the great turning.

Nature’s Agents of Transformation- The Global Butterfly Effect.

~Christopher Chase~

“See simplicity in the complicated,
Seek greatness in small things. In the Universe, the difficult things
are done as if they were easy.” ~Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching